Posts Tagged ‘reporter’

Forty years ago this week, Jews the world over watched in agony as Arab terrorists kidnapped and eventually massacred eleven Israeli Olympic athletes. The International Olympic Committee, bowing to Arab pressure, has repeatedly refused these Israelis a proper commemoration. But we as Jews ought to pay them the tribute of remembering their individual lives, deeds, and accomplishments.

They ranged in age from 53 to 18 and were born in varied places – Romania, Libya, Israel and the U.S. During the Holocaust, one fought Nazis, another fled to Siberia, and several lost their families. The youngest took up wrestling to fight anti-Semites and became a champion. All reached the apex of athletic achievement, representing Israel at the Munich “Games of Peace.” But Arab gunmen slaughtered them, killing Jews on German soil just 27 years after the Holocaust.

At around 4 a.m. on September 5, 1972, eight Palestinians invaded the dormitory where the Israeli team slept. Wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund awakened to strange noises. Creeping from his room, he went to investigate. In the dimness, he saw the terrorists’ silhouettes and their Kalashnikov rifles. Automatically he shouted, “Take cover boys!” and thrust his 6-foot-3, 290-pound frame against the door as they tried to push through.

As the terrorists wedged their Kalishnakovs into the door, he kept them out for precious seconds, giving his roommate time to scramble out a window while other athletes sought cover. The terrorists swept the rooms to round up the Jews. There had been twenty-one Israelis in the dormitory; eleven fell under the Arab guns.

Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg grabbed a terrorist’s rifle but was shot in the jaw. The captors marched him, his blood trailing on the floor, to another apartment, taking more hostages. They herded them in a line and marched them to another room. A wrestler broke away and Weinberg created a diversion: he punched a terrorist to the ground, fracturing the Arab’s jaw, and grabbed for his gun. The escaping wrestler survived but Weinberg was cut down. The terrorists dumped his body in front of the Israeli team’s dormitory.

Moshe Weinberg

Moshe Weinberg was a Sabra and the Israeli middleweight wrestling champion for most of a decade. He was a director of the Orde Wingate Institute, Israel’s national physical education center. Weinberg was only 30 when he became Israel’s wrestling coach, and only 33 when he died fighting for the lives of his teammates.

Yossef Romano, 32, an injured weightlifter on crutches, was going to resist despite his condition. When his wife, Ilana, learned he was a hostage, she remembered thinking, “I knew his character – he wouldn’t be treated like cattle. He would do something.” He threw down his crutches and lunged at a terrorist, seizing his AK-47. Another Arab riddled him with bullets. He was left bleeding to death in front of his horrified, helpless teammates.

Yossef Romano

Romano, born in Libya, was one of eleven children. Making aliyah in 1946, he fought in the Six-Day War. He was described as strong and gentle, always with a sweet smile. His wife recalled having a bad feeling as the Games approached. He had three little daughters, and on his last call home he told his wife this would be his last competition because “I don’t have enough time for my children.”

The hostages were forced to lie on the floor, limbs bound, with Romano’s body in the middle of the room. The terrorists, wearing sinister face hoods, threw a list of demands to German police gathered around the dormitory: they wanted 250 terrorists freed from Israeli jails. Soon, news of the siege spread but officials obscenely permitted the Olympics to continue. ABC kept televising the Games, interspersing scenes of the gunmen with a volleyball match cheered by thousands.

Israel would not release terrorists and twenty agonizing hours of negotiations between the Arabs and the Germans ensued. The Germans planned a rescue attempt, pretending they would offer the terrorists a jet to fly to an Arab country with their hostages. In reality, they planned to rescue the Israelis before they got on the plane. They arranged for helicopters to fly the terrorists and their captives to an airfield. The Israelis, manacled and blindfolded, were marched at gunpoint to the waiting helicopters, paraded in a circus-like atmosphere with camera bulbs flashing and spectators gawking behind police cordons.

The Weekly Standard is already advancing the speculation that Debbie Wasserman Schultz be let go from her post as DNC chair following her blatant lie regarding Republicans, Israel, and Israel’s ambassador Michael Oren.

In a TV appearance Tuesday night, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was asked about the Michael Oren email. But instead of acknowledging her misstatement, the DNC chair attacked the reporter, Philip Klein, who quoted her.

“I didn’t say he said that,” Wasserman Schultz said. “And unfortunately, that comment was reported by a conservative newspaper. It’s not surprising they would deliberately misquote me. What I always say is that unfortunately the Republicans have made Israel a political football, which is dangerous for Israel. And Ambassador Oren has said that we can’t ever suggest that there is any daylight between the two parties on Israel because there isn’t. And that that’s harmful to Israel. That’s what I said, and that is accurate.”

But Klein fired back. Not only did he state that “Debbie Wasserman Schultz lied on national TV,” and accuse her of smearing the good name of an honest reporter in order to achieve her goals, but posted the audio recording of her statements online, so that readers could judge for themselves whether Schultz made the statement about Oren. The clip was uploaded to Youtube, and posted below.

At least 500 hardcore mujaheedeen from Afghanistan have been killed in clashes with Syrian forces this week, claimed a senior Syrian official speaking to this column. The official said many of the mujaheeden now fighting in Syria previously were fighting the U.S. in Afghanistan.

Ironically, earlier this week, Reuters reported that President Obama signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government.

According to the report, which quotes U.S. sources familiar with the matter, Obama’s order was approved earlier this year and gives the CIA and other U.S. agencies authority to provide broad support that could help the rebels oust Assad. The White House continues to deny directly arming the rebels, stating it is only providing non-lethal aid.

In addition to the Afghan mujaheeden who died fighting in Aleppo, according to the Syrian official, claimed, this column has learned that Jihadiya Salafia in the Gaza Strip, a group which represents Al Qaeda in the coastal territory, earlier this week declared three days of mourning for its own jihadists who died in Syria in recent days.

Was Sunstein Too Hot To Keep Aboard?

Did regulatory czar Cass Sunstein resign in response to White House concern that some of Sunstein’s controversial views could become election issues?

President Obama released a brief statement on the departure of Sunstein, thanking him for “his friendship and for his years of exceptional service.” The White House statement did not provide any reason for Sunstein’s departure.

During his academic career, Sunstein has espoused several controversial views on regulating the media and Internet. This journalist first reported in 2008 that Sunstein proposed the government ban “conspiracy theorizing,” by, among other methods, sending agents to infiltrate websites and chat rooms. Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is the theory that global warming is a deliberate fraud.

In his 2009 book, On Rumors, Sunstein argued that websites should be obliged to remove “false rumors” while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such “rumors.” In the book, Sunstein cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”

Ayers became a name in the 2008 presidential campaign when it was disclosed he worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers’s apartment.

This journalist also previously reported that Sunstein drew up a “First Amendment New Deal” – a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would include the establishment of a panel of “nonpartisan experts” to ensure “diversity of view” on the airwaves.

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations, and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide.

These schemes and others are documented in the just released book by this reporter, Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed.

Major progressive groups with deep ties to the Obama administration produced a comprehensive, 96-page report with specific recommendations for how Obama should reform the U.S. military during his second term in office.

It strongly argues for the reduction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 292 deployed nuclear weapons and the complete elimination of the Trident II nuclear missile – a process Obama already initiated in April 2010 when he signed a deal with Russia reducing stocks of weapons grade plutonium.

The report also recommends the U.S. cease all further development of missile defenses. The military’s vital Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation program is to be cut by $10 billion across the board.

Next on the chopping block: the complete cancelation of the second SSN-744 Virginia Class submarine. Similarly targeted for cancelation are the V-22 Osprey helicopter and the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Many conservative pundits write and lecture on the threat of radical Islam. Almost none, however, possess political power. Geert Wilders is an exception. Head of the Netherlands’ third largest political party – the Party for Freedom – Wilders is on a mission to halt Islam’s advance in the West.

In May, Wilders published his first book, Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Regnery Publishing). In it, Wilders, as is his wont, ventures beyond the bounds of political correctness. For instance, unlike many other prominent politicians – including those on the Right – Wilders refuses to call Islam a “religion of peace.” In the book, he unabashedly writes:

• “Islam is the problem – and we should not be afraid to say so.”

• “[T]here are many moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.”

• “Islam…is a totalitarian system aiming for political domination of the world.”

• “[O]ur civilized Western culture is far superior to the barbaric culture of Islam.”

In short, Wilders is a breath of fresh air in a world that has gone mad in its attempts to reassure itself that 99.9 percent of Muslims are peace-loving citizens. As Wilders documents in the book, many Muslim immigrants yearn to impose Islamic culture and law on the West, yet the political class says virtually nothing. Those who do speak up are immediately tagged xenophobes and bigots.

As Mark Stein – possibly the greatest English satirist alive today – writes in his foreword to Wilders’ book: “[A]t election time in Europe, the average voter has a choice between a left-of-center party and an ever so mildly right-of-left-of-center party, and whichever he votes for, they’re generally in complete agreement on everything from mass immigration to unsustainable welfare programs to climate change. And they’re ruthless about delegitimizing anyone who wants a broader debate.”

Marked for Death is not a literary masterpiece. The writing is engaging enough, but thematically, the book seems a bit disjointed at times with Wilders liable to jump from Mohammed’s military conquests in the 7th century to the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical in 2004 to pedophilia in Islamic culture (it is apparently “widely condoned”).

Nonetheless, the book is important for three reasons. First, it contains a chock full of interesting information. Among many other items, Wilders writes about Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha (he was in his 50s, she was six); the Koran’s numerous anti-Semitic and violent verses; and Islam’s disturbing history of slavery (which amazingly continues to the present day).

Second, Wilders is great at finding little-known damning quotes about Islam. For example, Aldous Huxley wrote in 1925 (a tad too pessimistically), “In fifty years’ time, it seems to me, Europe can’t fail to be wiped out by these [Muslim] monsters.” A century earlier, John Quincy Adams predicted that the conflict between Christianity and Islam cannot “cease but by the extinction of that imposture [Islam], which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man.”

Most importantly, though, the book is valuable because Wilders wrote it, and Wilders deserves every bit of support he can get. Thanks to his outspokenness against Islam, Wilders regularly receives death threats and was forced to flee his home in 2004. Today, he lives in a bullet-proof safe house under 24/7 armed guard. As Wilders writes, “I have not walked the streets on my own in more than seven years.” Perhaps that’s just as well since Muslim immigrants have overrun Wilders’ old neighborhood, Kanaleneiland, transforming it into a crime zone.

Wilders, however, is not backing down. In 2008, he produced “Fitna,” a 17-minute documentary on violence and the Koran, which generated enormous controversy. And in 2010, his Party for Freedom, which he founded four years earlier, won 16 percent of the vote, becoming the Netherland’s third largest party. Due to his influence, the government agreed to decrease immigration from Muslim countries (Wilders wants it abolished completely); increase pressure on immigrants to assimilate into Dutch culture; and reject elements of multi-culturalism, which Wilders blames for creating the Netherlands’s Muslim problem in the first place.

One need not agree with all of Wilders’ ideas. For example, some may reject his call to ban new mosques in the United States and Europe. Others may question the wisdom of banning the Koran in the Netherlands (Wilders argues that the Koran is no less dangerous than Hitler’s Mein Kampf which the Netherlands bans). Indeed, some of Wilders’ ideas landed him in court in 2009 for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” – a trial that Wilders says was a “farce” and “an anti-democratic exercise to suppress my freedom.” (He was acquitted in 2011.)

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second-term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations, and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide.

The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first-term defense agenda, call for massive second-term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change.

These schemes and many more are documented in this reporter’s soon-to-be-released book, Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed. The book reveals the template for Obama’s next four years – the actual, extensive plans created by Obama’s own top advisers and progressive strategists.

Fool Me Twice documents how major progressive groups with deep ties to the Obama administration got together to produce a comprehensive, 96-page report with specific recommendations for how Obama should reform the U.S. military during his second term in office.

This detailed blueprint, titled “A Report of the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States” (or 2012 Unified Security Budget), lays out a future Obama “defense” agenda.

The Unified Security Budget is a joint product of the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Previous recommendations from the two groups’ yearly Unified Security Budgets have been adapted by the Obama administration.

The report takes issue with the use of forces on the ground in various countries to secure or influence the longer-term strategic position of other nations. It recommends scaling back all U.S. ground forces by 20 percent; reducing the Navy’s surface fleet by 20 percent – including two carriers and carrier combat air wings – and reducing the Air Force by two combat air wings, while cutting standing peacetime overseas deployments in Europe and East Asia by up to 50,000 troops at a time.

According to Fool Me Twice, the Unified authors strongly argue for the reduction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 292 deployed nuclear weapons and the complete elimination of the Trident II nuclear missile – a process Obama already initiated in April 2010 when he signed a deal with Russia reducing stocks of weaponsgrade plutonium.

The joint CAP and IPS report also recommends the U.S. cease all further development of missile defenses. Next on the chopping block: the complete cancellation of the second SSN-744 Virginia Class submarine.

Slated for release on August 7, Fool Me Twiceunveils all the main areas of Obama’s second-term domestic policy onslaught affecting such issues as jobs, wages, health care, immigration, electoral reform, national energy policy, and much more.

That extremist, Abdullah Omar Naseef, is deeply connected to the Abedin family.

Naseef is secretary-general of the Muslim World League (MWL), an Islamic charity known to have spawned terrorist groups, including one declared by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaeda front.

KleinOnline was first to report that Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin, was the official representative of Naseef’s terror-stained Muslim World League in the 1990s. Also, Huma’s father, Professor Syed Abiden, was the founder of the Institute for Minority Affairs, a Saudi group that reportedly had the quiet but active support of Naseef.

Saleha is currently the editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, the publication of Syed’s Institute. The Institute bills itself as “the only scholarly institution dedicated to the systematic study of Muslim communities in non-Muslim societies around the world.”

Now it has emerged that Huma served on the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs’s editorial board from 2002-2008. Documents obtained by author Walid Shoebat reveal that Naseef served on the board with Huma from at least December 2002 to December 2003. Naseef’s sudden departure from the board in December 2003 coincides with the time at which various charities led by Naseef’s Muslim World League were declared illegal and terrorist in nature.

The MWL has been accused of terrorist ties, as have its various offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization and Al Haramain, which was declared a terror financing front by the U.S. and UN. Indeed, the Treasury Department, in a September 2004 press release, alleged that Al Haramain had “direct links” with Osama bin Laden. The group is now banned worldwide by United Nations Security Council Committee 1267.

Half a century ago in May, Israel hanged Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann for overseeing Germany’s extermination of six million European Jews, fully one-third of the world’s prewar Jewish population. The murder of the six million staggers the mind. Such a vast breadth of our people, each of them with his own individual dreams, loves and aspirations, exterminated.

The Nazi genocide was undertaken through a rail-linked infrastructure of concentration camps, ghettos and “liquidation sites” meticulously administered by SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Eichmann, chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo. At war’s end Eichmann was captured by U.S. soldiers but managed to hide his true identity and high-ranking role before escaping into the chaos of postwar Europe. He was mentioned during the 1946 Nuremburg trials but by then his trail had gone cold and the world at large seemingly forgot about him. Not, however, Israel and Holocaust survivors seeking justice.

In 1960 Mossad/Shin Bet chief Isser Harel investigated a series of tips on Eichmann’s possible whereabouts, including one from a blind man in Argentina who suspected his daughter was dating one of Eichmann’s sons unknowingly. The Mossad investigation found Eichmann was living under the name “Ricardo Klement” with his wife and four sons in Buenos Aires. Round-the-clock surveillance of the target was established and by April several agents, most of whom had lost family to the Nazis, sprang into action.

On May 11, 1960 as the man believed to be Eichmann got off a bus, the agents snatched him, forced him into a waiting car and sped off to a pre-arranged rented “safe house.” Under interrogation, he immediately admitted he was Adolph Eichmann. The agents kept him at the safe house for some nine days, chained to a bed.

The Mossad knew Argentina would never extradite Eichmann because it had received millions in Nazi bribe money and gold and was sympathetic to pro-Nazi German expatriates who had flocked there after the war. Because of this, the operation had been timed to coincide with Argentina’s 150th anniversary celebration attended by dignitaries from around the world – including an Israeli delegation who flew to South America on a chartered El Al flight. The plane provided an ideal way to smuggle Eichmann out of the country.

On the night of May 20, the empty El Al jetliner was parked on an airport tarmac when a limousine pulled up to the plane and a group in airline uniforms crowded up its steps. Eichmann, who had been sedated, was half-carried to a window seat. Soon the drugged Eichmann, watched over by his Mossad guards, was flying to a Jewish state on a Jewish airline, flown by a Jewish pilot. Quite a turn of events for the monster who during the war had worked so diligently to make the Jews into “an extinct people.”

The next day, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion tersely told the Knesset that the “Israeli secret service had located Eichmann” and he would be tried shortly. The announcement stunned the world and Jews everywhere celebrated. But many world leaders, accustomed to Jews being defenseless victims, were outraged by Israel’s bold action. Argentina immediately called for Eichmann’s return and the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned Israel.

Israel, believing only it could dispense justice to Eichmann proceeded to put him on trial and assembled the prosecution’s case. For nine months the world was riveted as 112 survivors gave heartrending testimony in a Jerusalem courtroom on the suffering that Eichmann had unleashed on the Jewish people.

Sitting behind bulletproof Plexiglas, Eichmann remained impassive throughout the trial, claiming he had no personal hatred of Jews and had “only followed orders.”

In mid-December 1961 Eichmann was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death – the first and so far only time Israel dispensed capital punishment. Five months later, on May 31, 1962, he was marched from his prison cell to a specially constructed hanging platform, where a guard pulled a lever. Eichmann’s body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the dark waters just beyond Israel’s national boundaries.

The man who had been chosen to act as executioner, a Yemeni Jew, was interviewed many years later on Israel Radio. “It was the greatest of mitzvahs,” he declared, “wiping out Amelek.”

In a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony as lovely as they come, Professor Manny Grossman and his smiling bride, Gloria, became man and wife under a chupah of grape vines and bananas, on the spacious back lawn of the Golden Gate Temple in Marin County, California, where statues of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and Moses are scattered around the beautiful gardens, and an award-winning fountain of drinkable Californian wine gushing forth from a boulder, and representing the well of Miriam, reminds congregants of their glorious Biblical past and Judaism’s brotherhood with the family of nations. With the Golden Gate Bridge symbolically in the background, the nuptial union between the pioneer Jewish anthropologist and the stunning, white wedding-gowned gorilla marked a historic bridge between mankind and the world of the primates, and another one of Judaism’s great contributions to human culture. Rabbi Christine Christy, dynamic leader of California’s popular PDLR (Progressive Democratic Liberal Reform) Jewish Movement, and pulpit rabbi at the Golden Gate Temple, officiated at the tear-filled ceremony.

“I hereby pronounce you man and wife according to the tradition of Moses,” she declared, her voice cracking with emotion.

“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, if I not set Jerusalem over my highest joy,” the tuxedoed groom affirmed, stepping on and shattering the traditional glass to the cheers and applaud of the overflowing crowd of university professors, doctors, scientists, and California legislators. At first, when the ecstatic bride let out a tremendous gorilla roar, a frightened hush fell over the crowd, but when the happy groom pounded his chest in a Tarzan-like call, everyone laughed. Hand-in-hand, husband and wife walked out to the center of the lawn where everyone joined in a festive hora, as the orchestra played a lively rendition of the famous song, “Tradition,” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“This is truly a historic occasion,” the proud rabbi exclaimed, saying she hopes to officiate at other inter-species marriages. “It puts an end to all racism, discrimination, and jingoistic talk of a ‘chosen nation,’ which has always separated the Jewish People from the brotherhood of man. Today, with their wedding, Manny and Gloria Grossman have proclaimed to the world that all the beings which God created are equal.”

Needless to say, the marriage ceremony was not without its share of controversy. In the middle of the dancing, a dozen gays crashed the festivities, holding signs which read, “We Want to Marry Gorillas Too!”

“I’d be happy to officiate at gay-gorilla weddings,” Rabbi Christy, herself a self-proclaimed lesbian, declared. “I don’t see any problem with it at all.”

“What about the rejection of non-Orthodox rabbis by the Chief Rabbinate in Israel?” a reporter asked her.

“Israel is a democracy, and in our enlightened day and age, democracy rules, not God,” Rabbi Christy answered. “Israel’s attorney general decided to equally recognize all religious congregational leaders, from whatever stream of Judaism, and grant them all the same standing and financial compensation from the State – and I am sure the Israel Supreme Court will agree.”

“What if Israel’s democracy should vote that Israel will no longer be a Jewish State?” another reporter queried.

“I would gladly accept that also,” the media-adored rabbi replied. “That would be an important step toward the universality of mankind and break down the myth of Jewish statehood which has too long been an obstacle to world peace. Judaism is a religion, not a nationality, and Jews don’t need a land of their own. Let all the Israelis come and live here in California. So many of them live here already. There’s plenty of room. And just as no person or peoples are holier than any other, neither is any land holier than the next.”

Of course, Orthodox Jews don’t agree with what they call “the circus wedding” and with the new-age opinions of the ultra-progressive woman rabbi, citing the Biblical verse, “Cursed be he who lies with any manner of beast” (Deut. 27:21), which classifies sexual relations with animals as a forbidden form of incest.

“What people do in their own bedrooms is their business,” Rabbi Christy maintains. “The Torah is out of date. Rabbis have always had the ability to enact new ordinances in keeping with the times. Besides, who says that Professor Grossman intends to have sexual relations with his wife? Today, as far as I am concerned, their platonic love for each other has been sanctified by the holy bonds of marriage, that’s all.”

“If they do have children, will they be Jewish?” the rabbi was asked.

“Of course. I presided over Gloria’s conversion myself,” she insisted. “She lights the Shabbat candles and loves to listen to the songs of Jewish cantors, especially Yossela Rosenblatt.” And then with a chuckle, she added, “If they have a child, we’ll call it a Jewilla!”

The whole affair started while Professor Grossman was conducting an anthropological research mission in the jungles of Africa on the mating habits of gorillas. “It was love at first sight,” he fondly recalls. “Gloria was different from all the other baboons and chimps. We had a special relationship right from the start. I arranged for her ocean voyage to America, divorced my wife, and today I am the happiest man in the world.”

But the path to the wedding chupah wasn’t without its share of hurdles. Some conservative streams of Judaism opposed the gorilla’s conversion. After a few weeks of vociferous debate, the different branches on non-Orthodox Judaism agreed to a simple test. Concurring that all Jews loved gefilta fish and bagels and lox, Gloria was brought before a panel of progressive, liberal, reform, and conservative rabbis, and presented with a plate of gefilta fish. With a disdainful swipe of her paw, she sent the small balls flying across the hall. Immediately, Professor Grossman stood up and protested, stating that gorillas were vegetarians and didn’t eat fish. One of the reform rabbis demanding the test be repeated, observing that no Jew really liked gefilta fish without horseradish, so a bowl of horseradish was quickly fetched and set before the gorilla with a new plate of gefilta fish. Once again, all the judges had to duck as the ape sent the little balls flying. But flashing her big white teeth in a winning smile, she scooped up the crimson horseradish in one of her giant paws and swallowed it down in a gulp.

So a platter of bagels and lox was set before the primate. Once again, holding its nose in a gesture of disdain, the vegetarian threw away the smelly strips of fish and started chomping on the bagels.

“That’s proof enough for me,” another conservative rabbi exclaimed. “If the ape likes bagels, that’s a sure sign that the conversion is valid and that the gorilla is a Jew in every regard!”

All in all, the Californian wedding was a lovely affair. Noticing a little old Jewish woman standing to the side of the dancing, this reporter went over to her and asked what she was doing at the wedding?

“I’m Manny’s grandmother,” she answered.

“How do you feel about the celebration?” I asked.

The old lady shrugged and let out a small sigh and said, “At least he had a Jewish wedding.”